Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/94

82 or a dawcocke, a knave or an under hriefe, of what tamp oever you be, currant or counterfet, the tagelike time will bring you to mot perfect light, and lay you open: neither are you to be hunted from thence though the car-crowes in the yard hoot you, hie at you, pit at you, yea throw dirt even in your teeth: ’tis mot gentleman-like patience to endure all this, and to laugh at the illy animals. But if the rabble, with a full throat, crie away with the foole, you were wore than a mad-man to tarry by it: for the gentleman and the foole hould never fit on the tage together. Mary, let this obervation go hand in hand with the ret: or rather, like a country-erving man, ome five yards before them. Preent not your elfe on the tage (epecially at a new play) untill the quaking prologue hath (by rubbing) got cullor into his cheekes, and is ready to give the trumpets their cue that hees upon point to enter: for then it is time, as though you were one of the properties, or that you dropt of the hangings to creep from behind the arras, with your tripos or three-legged toole in one hand, and a teton mounted betweene a fore-finger and a thumbe, in the other: for if you hould betow your peron upon the vulgar, when the belly of the houe is but halfe full, your apparell is quite eaten up, the ahion lot, and the proportion of your body in more danger to be devoured, then if it were erved up in the Counter amongt the Poultry: avoid that as you would the batome. It hall crowne you with rich commendation to laugh alowd in the middet of the mot erious and addet cene of the terriblet tragedy: and to let that clapper (your tongue) be tot o high that all the houe may ring of it: your lords ue it; your knights are apes to the lords, and dofo too: your inne-a-court-man is zany to the knights, and (many very curvily) comes likewie limping after it: bee thou a beagle to them all, and never lin nuffing till you have ented them: for by talking and laughing (like a ploughman in a morris) you heape Pelion upon Oa, glory upon glory: as firt all the eyes in the galleries will leave walking after the players, and onely follow you: the implet dolt in the houe natches up your name, and when he meetes you in the treetes, or that you fall into his hands in the middle of a watch, his word hall be taken for you: heele cry, Hees uch a gallant, and you pae. Secondly you publih your temperance to the world, in that you eeme not to reort thither to tate vaine pleaures with a hungrie appetite; but onely as a gentleman, to pend a oolih houre or two, becaue